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From TOP500 Supercomputing Sites - Wiki

I hope it's all right if I ask questions here, because I couldn't find where else to do it. First off, what do you define a super computer as? Also what operating systems do most super computers use (I'm particularly curious as to the balance between Windows and Linux operating systems)?--DarkMastero 20:59, 20 July 2007 (CEST)

First of all this wiki project is focused on description of systems that have been included to the Top500 Supercomputer’s List (the Top500 List uses HPL Benchmark). Definitely all Top500 systems deserved to be identified as supercomputers. However this wiki project is not limited to only Top500 systems. According to wikipedia.org any computer that led the world (or was close to doing so) in terms of processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation, at the time of its introduction is a supercomputer. For example, a specialized hardware for molecular dynamics simulations called MDGRAPE-3 satisfies the definition but can’t be benchmarked and included to the Top500 List. However such systems also can be described in this wiki.

Regarding operating systems you should look here:

http://www.top500.org/stats/list/29/os http://www.top500.org/charts/list/29/osfam